On concern for poor
I am a United Methodist pastor. The Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, is clear about poverty. Over 2,000 times in scripture, we read of God's deep concern for the poor. We are also called to care for "the least of these" in our midst. It is not right for someone to work hard, play by the rules and be forced to live in poverty. It is time for Arkansans to act and raise the minimum wage.
According to a recent report from Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, one in four Arkansas children will go to bed tonight without enough food. Most of these children have parents who work, often full-time, but low wages have their families struggling.
A parent working full-time for minimum wage makes less than $18,000 a year. After paying for food, rent and transportation, there is little left in the paycheck for clothes, utility bills and gasoline.
As Arkansans, we are promised that if you work hard, you can get ahead. But there are many hardworking families in our state that can't make ends meet. It is time to raise the minimum wage in Arkansas.
I encourage Arkansas voters to vote in November for Issue 5 which will gradually increase the state's minimum wage from $8.50 an hour to $11 an hour by 2021.
STEPHEN COPLEY
North Little Rock
Unbelievable remark
So another mass shooting. We lead the world in this. Eleven killed at a synagogue. Trump said (I saw him saying this on TV--unbelievable) that if they had had armed guards at the synagogue maybe this wouldn't have happened.
Really?
So what our leader is saying is that for town meetings, EHC meetings, church services, high school football games, golf tournaments, choir practices, children's summer camps, weddings, funerals ... any gathering of people, we'd better have an armed guard on duty, or better yet several armed guards. Is this completely ridiculous or what? It's also the position of the NRA (enough said).
Even more sad is the fact that millions of Americans still support Trump. What on earth can they be thinking?
REG EDWARDS
Compton
Need no outsourcing
Seems like our homegrown terrorists, with a little encouragement from the fool, are doing a better job of killing Americans than any foreign ones.
CHARLES ISGRIG
Pine Bluff
Disenfranchised tribe
Fellow Arkansans, I know you are as happy as I am that the God-fearing Republican legislature of North Dakota, together with our new Supreme Court of the United States, is disenfranchising members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe because they do not have street addresses.
Holy Ronald Reagan!
These people have been here centuries longer than the number of years all Trump's immigrant wives, his Scottish immigrant mom, and all his mistresses combined have lived here.
L.A. NOLEN
Bigelow
We're better than this
Our president, who's practiced dog-whistle politics as an art, said in response to neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville that there were "fine people on both sides." It was reported by his first wife that he kept a book of Hitler's speeches at bedside. He apparently believes he should be president for life, just as is his beloved Putin in Russia.
His embrace of racists, even in his administration and party, and his use of code words from racist and anti-Semitic sources have provided cover for American anti-Semites, racists and white supremacists. Perhaps he was forgetting or ignoring the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis.
In response to the killing of 11 in the synagogue in Pittsburgh, he's said a few scripted words written by others before launching into his continued attacks on the free press and on Democrats. The man is incapable of being a normal American president. He has shamed us all.
One must wonder about Republicans. My dad was one. In the bottom drawer of our bureau when I was a child, he kept a scrapbook of images from the German concentration camp at Nordhausen. He, as an officer in the 104th Infantry Division, had to go there to witness the atrocity and to assist in the cleanup, ordering German citizens to go in and stack bodies that in life had been reduced to walking skeletons. My father would be shocked to see a Republican Party enslaved to dog-whistle politics, racism and anti-Semitism. He would be shocked by a leader casting himself in the image of the man who attempted to enslave Europe.
Will the Republican Party wake up? Early voting has started in Arkansas. I urge you to vote. If you are a Republican, please urge the leaders of your party to understand that we all are much better than what their party has become.
DOUG STOWE
Eureka Springs
Protect Constitution
The current threat from the POTUS to repeal or alter the 14th Amendment to our Constitution regarding birthright citizenship by executive order is profoundly troubling.
To do so I think would qualify as a high crime or misdemeanor. In his oath of office he swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the USA.
Any attempt to circumvent the Constitution and its protection for any person by executive order is not only repugnant but also abuse of power.
Understanding that his words are more likely intended to inflame the voter base rather than any real attempt to violate the Constitution is not surprising. This is a president who has clearly demonstrated a desire to divide rather than bring a sense of community to our country.
If he attempts to circumvent the Constitution by executive order, I believe impeachment proceedings should begin immediately.
CHRIS BAKER
Little Rock
Editorial on 11/01/2018